p. 173 | The Sunny Side

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · May 27, 1875

The Sunny Side.

WHY is it that the great majority of religious teachers have fallen, at the present time, into the habit of presenting only the sunny side of religion? Have they lost sight of the fact that there is a cross connected with the religion of the Bible? Do they not remember there is suffering, self-denial, and sacrifice, to be experienced as tokens of separation from, and death to, the world? Have they forgotten the words of the Master, “Enter ye in at the strait gate; for wide is the gate and broad is the way, that leadeth to destruction, and many there be which go in thereat; because strait is the gate, and narrow is the way, which leadeth unto life, and few there be that find it.”

Has the following language of the great Teacher faded from the memory of his professed disciples: “If any man will come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross, and follow me”? Matt. 16: 24.

Were we left alone to the teachers of a popular religion, to learn our duty as Christians, to learn the distinguishing evidences we must bear that divine grace has wrought such a change in our hearts and lives, that with the apostle we can say, “But God forbid that I should glory, save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom the world is crucified unto me, and I unto the world” (Gal. 6:14), one might suppose “the offense of the cross” had ceased, and that now we can “sail to Heaven on flowery beds of ease.”

In speaking of the sermons preached in New York City last Christmas by different ministers, a writer says, “It is instructive to see how modern clerical teaching dwells upon the bright side of our religion, and almost altogether evades allusion to its threats and terrors. Mr. Beecher is famous for this kind of preaching. We think of Mr. Beecher always in connection with birds and flowers and music, as if he should speak from a bower rather than a pulpit. . . . We would point out the notable fact that the regular, old-fashioned preaching of the doctrine of punishment for sin has almost entirely disappeared from the metropolitan pulpit. Our clergymen make religion so agreeable that it is really a sacrifice to remain a sinner, and we are compelled to consider those persons very foolish who avoid the churches when they might so easily obtain the assurance of heavenly joys without giving up a single respectable worldly pleasure.” A. S. HUTCHINS.